Happily Ever After
by Dream's Penumbra
Summary: So many blue pieces, none like the ones he remembers. And grass-green shards laugh with the sun.


**No. I will not. DarkeningTurquoise will not start another little oneshot with all her little oneshottie babies screaming at her to finish them.**

**Ah. Too late. (I don't own.) (R&R please?)  
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><p>It's like a different world. The laughter of the children, clapping with their little hands. He hadn't had nearly as good a childhood, even if the Inkworld hadn't always been as it was now. Of course, even now, it would be too much to call it a paradise - but it was that, at least on the surface.<p>

_(Surfacing memories. Keep them away, Farid.)_

It's the crescendo of his performance, the grand finale. Blue jays of fire. Walls, tongues, twisting figures, all flickering in the slight breeze and willing to dance for him. It's a treacherous friend, fire, but it's loyal. How that can be, Farid doesn't know.

_(Almost like Dustfinger. But the boy doesn't know that.)_

It's routine now, it's spectacular but he doesn't pay much attention to it. With the last twister of scarlet flames striking the sky as if to break it into a million tiny pieces, there comes the shower of clapping.

_(So many blue pieces, none like the ones he remembers.)_

Little coins, glinting and flashing with the firelight that still surrounds the dark-skinned boy. Little children, hand-in-hand, laughing, giggling - for these girls and boys, the world is all good, none bad, everything pretty and clear and merry. Everyday happyday.

_(For him, that happiness had always lasted only so long.)_

It's a different world for them. They're not one of the children who had to hide away in caves, to climb up to a sky-scraping tree, out of reach of a giant and the Milksop, fleeing death - death physical and death much, much worse than that.

_(He knows. If they were one of them, they'd be broken dolls.)_

He's always tried so hard. To help the ones he loves, he's always tried his best. Dodged bullets and breathed fire, endured Cheeseface for weeks on end and fought it out with that vile, _horrible_ Sootbird. Never really payed off, did it?

_(God, no. Why won't anyone really care about him for once?)_

Deep down, Farid knows that Dustfinger cared, and _she_ did too. Only she cared more for another. Oh, they all cared for him. Only, in the end, he wasn't first. He ranked somewhere like three or four. Everyone knew him, cared for him even, but was never really close enough.

_(The boy with the dark coffee skin wonders if it's his own fault.)_

Not important. If only one would actually put him first. _Chatter,__ chatter_, goes Jink. _Don__'__t__ forget __me_, the marten goes. But even Jink doesn't care for Farid the way the boy wants to be cared for. Oh, curse it all.

_(It's too painful to think, and it's too painful not to, either.)_

_I __should__ go_, Farid thinks, when he finds himself numbly standing. He has no equipment nowadays, he finds acquaintance with the fire and they dance for his pain, to cheer him up. For that he should be thankful. And he is, as he slides the coins into a leather pouch.

_(Clink, clink they go. Like knives and swords from another lifetime.)_

Farid the Wanderer. With a marten and fire for his friends, and no one else. What else title suited him better? Never settling in, never really important, here one day, gone the other, here, there, here, there, oh I didn't know you were gone.

_(Flickering fire. His best friend. Its healing touch is the best.)_

_Bump, __bump._ "Oh, I'm sorry." Says a light voice. The boy's bowed head rises a bit, mumbling an apology back. A girl, an inch or so smaller than him, olive skin and grass-green eyes. She's smiling, a genuine, smile, like she's going to burst out laughing any second.

_(The sun in her smile - and something melts in Farid's heart.)_

"You're the Fire-Eater." The girl says, the sunlight sparkling off her laughter. "That was amazing!" The Fire-Eater nods, not quite sure what to do, and she adds, "I'm Moza, by the way." - and, without meaning to, the boy blurts, "Farid."

_(The start of something new and brilliant. Something with sparks of sun.)_

The girl with the sun in her smile, and the boy with the aching heart locked in his chest. His heart melts over time with the shining sun, and the smile of the dark-skinned boy is no longer privileged for the dancing flames.

_(And what a smile that is, one made of an unbreakable heart that was melted.)_

Weeks of desolation, aching hearts and twisting sorrows. Night after night of fire by his side, coaxing the troubled boy into sleep - laden with nightmares, of loss and dejection. It all comes down to this; Farid and **Moza.**

_(And this boy deserves this ending, so here; They lived happily ever after.)_


End file.
